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Sri Lanka to assess civil war deaths

Michael EdwardsUpdated
Thu 28 Nov 2013, 6:58 PM AEDT

Sri Lanka is about to begin a survey that it says will determine the amount of people killed during its 26 year-long civil war. The government says the census will collect information on deaths, missing people and damage to property from 1983 to 2009. Sri Lanka's been feeling international pressure over allegations of mass civilian deaths at the end of the civil war.

Transcript

MARK COLVIN: Sri Lanka is about to begin a survey that it says will determine the number of people killed during its 26-year-long civil war.

The government says the census will collect information on deaths, missing people and damage to property from 1983 to 2009.

Sri Lanka's been feeling international pressure over allegations of mass civilian deaths at the end of the civil war.

The Commonwealth leaders' meeting held in Colombo earlier this month was overshadowed by claims of war crimes.

The ABC's South Asia correspondent Michael Edwards joins me now.

What's the significance of this announcement?

MICHAEL EDWARDS: Well the significance is that it's the first time the Sri Lankan government has actually put a survey of this nature into action - that is if it does go ahead as they've said.

They've promised these types of actions before; they've said that they would conduct a survey to see the damage done and the amount of people killed during the civil war, but this appears to be the most concrete step they've taken to actually putting those plans into place.

MARK COLVIN: Who'll actually take the survey? Will there be people in uniform doing it or will there be people in uniform guarding them? I mean, you can imagine that there could be some quite intimidating circumstances in which it could be taken.

MICHAEL EDWARDS: The government's saying that there'll be 16,000 officials carrying out the survey. Now what we know about the Sri Lankan government is that most officials are Sinhalese, from the majority Sinhalese party. There are Tamil officials up in the north, but most, as I said, most of them are Sinhalese; most of the police in the north are Sinhalese. There are Tamils as well, and most of the troops as well in the Sri Lankan army are Sinhalese.

So, one would imagine that this is going to be a Sinhalese dominated exercise and that there could be a level of intimidation placed upon people in the north who are Tamils - particularly if these officials say that they need to have security with them when they go to take the survey.

Even if they don't have security with them, even if there is not overt intimidation of them when the survey is taking place, there's no doubt that they will feel as though that they're being watched and that their answers are being taken into account and being observed.

MARK COLVIN: Has to be said that the Tamil Tigers themselves committed war crimes on more than one occasion, on many occasions in fact. So what you could get if the thing is skewed is a very skewed result - one which shows up Tamil war crimes and not Sinhalese ones.

MICHAEL EDWARDS: Well absolutely that's right. I mean, all of the UN reports and all of the reporting that's been done on the end of the civil also points out that the Tamil Tigers were heavily involved in abuses against civilians and putting civilians in the line of fire where they indeed were killed in great numbers.

So, yes, I imagine it depends on the questioning that's put to the people in the north. If it focuses on one side of the war and one side of the allegations, the chances are that the answers that come out will not be balanced and might not provide a full and accurate picture of what took place.

MARK COLVIN: So is this a reaction by Sri Lanka to what happened at the Commonwealth summit and general international pressure?

MICHAEL EDWARDS: You'd have to suspect that that is at play in some way. The British prime minister David Cameron, should I say in contrast to the Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, condemned Sri Lanka for not investigating war crimes that allegedly took place at the end of civil war enough, and he basically demanded that they have a full and independent inquiry into war crimes allegations.

Now, he set a deadline of March and that's when the UN Human Rights Council meets again, and he said he will push for an independent international inquiry-

MARK COLVIN: I was going to say, what chance is there that there will be international observers involved in all of this?

MICHAEL EDWARDS: Well there's no mention from the Sri Lankan government at least that they will allow international observers to take part in this survey, and there's no doubt as well that, when March comes, that they would use a survey like this to say, "We have carried out our own investigations; we have done this independently and thoroughly, and we've come up with what we've found. So there's no need for an international inquiry."

So that's why we'd suspect that the deadline of March, and David Cameron's comments did have a big impact on Mahinda Rajapaksa's decision to carry out this survey.